The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1887-09-15

! began an enumeration of some of her
rights, and this morning resume the SUBJ
! ject.
In the first place, woman has q special
and superlatiye right-not again going
| back to what l have already suil-womap
has the special and superlatiye right Of
blessing and comforting the sick.
What land, what street, what house has
not felt the smitings of disease? Tens Of
thousands of sick beds What shall we do
with them? Shall man, with his rough
hand and clumsy foot 90 stumbling around
| the sick room trying to soothe the dis.
tracted nerves, and alleviate the pains of
| the tossing patient? The young man at
| college may scott at the idea of being un-
| der material influences; but at the first
blast of the typhoid fever on his cheek, he
says: "Where is mother?" Walter Scott
wrote partly in satire and partly in compli-
ment when he said:
o woman, in hours of ease,
Uncertain coy, and hard to please.
When pain and anguish wiring the brow,
A ministering angel thou.
think the most pathetic passage of all
the Bible is the description of the lad who
went out TO the harvest field of Shunem
and got misunderstanding his hands on
his temples and crying out: "Oh, my head!
my head!" and they said: "Carry him to
his mother" And then the record is: Gle
sat on her knees till noon, ant len died."
1t is an awful thing to be ill away from
home in strange hotel, once in awhile
men corning in to look at you, holding their
hand over their mouth for fear they will
catch the contagion. How roughly they
turn you in bed. How loudly they talk.
How you long for the ministries of home.
knew one such who went away from one
of the brightest Of homes, for several
weeks business absence at the west. A
telegram came at midnight that he was on
his death bed, far away from home. BY
express train the wife and daughters went
westward, but they went too late He feared
not to die, but he was in agony to live until
his family got there. He tried to bribe the
doctor to make him live little while
longer. He said: 81 am willing to die,
but not alone" But the pulses huttered
the eyes closed and the heart stopped. The
express trains met in the midnight; wife
and daughters going westward -lifeless re-
mains of husband and father coming east
ward. Oh, it was q sad, pitiful, over
whelming spectacle! When we are sick
we want to be sick at home; when the time
comes for us to die we want to die at home.
The room may be very humble, and the
faces that look into ours may be very plain;
but who cares for that? Loving hands to
bathe the temples. Loving voices to speak
good cheer. Loving lips to read the COM
fovting promises of Jesus. In our last
dreadful war, men cast the cannon; men
fashioned the musketry; men cried to the
hosts: "Forward, march," men hurled
| their battalions on the sharp edges Of the
| enemy, crying, "Charge! charge" but wo-
man scraped the lint; woman adminis-
| tered the cordials; woman watched by the
| dying couch; woman wrote the last message
to the home circle; woman wept at the
solitary burial attended by herself and four
men and spade. We greeted the General
home with brass bands, and triumphal
arches, and wild huzzas; but the story is
too good to be written anywhere, save in
the chronicles of Heaven, of Mrs. Brady,
who came down among the sick in the
swamps Of the Chickahominy; of Margaret
| Breckenridge, who came 10 men who had
been for weeks with their wounds un-
dressed-some of them frozen to the
ground, and when she turned them over
those that had an arm left waved it and
filed the air with their "hurrah;" of Mrs.
Hodge, who came from Chicago with
blankets and with pillows, until the men
shouted: "Three cheers for the Christian
commission! God bless the women at
home!" then sitting down to take the last
MESSAGE "Tell my wife not to fret about
me, but to meet me in Heaven; tell her to
train up the boys whom we have loved so
we'll; tell her we shall meet again in the
good land; tell her to bear my loss like the
Christian wife of Christian soldier" and
of Mrs. Shelton, into whose face the con-
valescent soldier looked and said: "Your
grapes and cologne cured me-" Men did
their work with shot and shell and carbine
and howitzer; women did their work with
socks and slippers and bandages and warm
drinks and Scripture texts and gentle
strokings of the hot temples and stories Of
that land where they never have any pain.
Men knelt down over the wounded and
said: "On which side did you fght?"
Women knelt down over the wounded and
said: "Where are you hurt? What nice
thing can L make for you to eat? What
makes you cry?" Tonight, while we men
are sound asleep in our beds, there will be
a light in yonder loft there will be groan-
ing down that dark alley; there will be cries
of distress in that cellar. Men will sleep,
and women will watch.
Again; woman has superlative right to
take care of the poor. There are hundreds
and thousands of them all over the land.
There is kind of work that men cannot
do for the poor. Here comes a group Of
very little bare foot children to the door of
the Dorcas Society. They need to be
clothed and provided for. Which of these
directors Of banks would know how many
yards il would take to make that little girl
q dress? Which of these masculine hands
could fit hat to that little girls head?
Which of the wise men would know how to
tie that new pair of shoes? Man some
times gives his charity in a rough way, and
it falls like the fruit Of tree in the east,
which fruit comes down so heavily that it
breaks the skull of the man who is trying
to gather it. But woman glides so softly
into the house of destitution, and finds out
all the sorrows of the place, and puts so
quietly the donation on the table, that all
the family come out on the front steps as
she departs, expecting that from under her
shawl she will thrust out two wings and go
right up toward Heaven, from whence she
seems to have come down. o Christian
young woman! if you would make yourself
happy and win the blessing of Christ, go
out among the destitute. A loaf of bread |
or bundle of socks may make homely |
load to carry, but the angels of God will |
come out to watch, and the Lord Almighty |
will give his messenger hosts charge, say
ing: Look after that woman. Canopy
her with your wings and shelter her from
all harm;" and while you are seated in the |
house Of destitution and suffering, the |
little ones around the room will whisper: |
who is she2 Amt she beautiful" and |
If you will listen right sharply you will |
hear dripping down through the leaky roof |
and rolling over the rotten stairs, the angel |
chant that shook Bethlehem. "Glory to \
God in the highest, and on earth peace,
good will to men," Can you tell me why |
q Christian woman, going down among the
haunts Of iniquity on a Christian errand,
never meets with any iniquityp stood in
the chapel Of Helen Chalmers, the daugh-